Yellow
by Parizaad
Summary: She had a brother, once. Sayu-centric.


**Yellow**

by Parizaad

 ** _Disclaimer_** _: I do not own Death Note._

* * *

Sayu is seven years old.

There is a crumbly bark of a heady smelling tree underneath her fleshy, soft fingertips. Her tiny form is half hidden behind the cool shadow of the tree. She is suppressing a rolling tide of bubbly giggles in her chest, bouncing on the balls of her feet. Her bright pink Power Puff shoes gleam, they pinch her toes but the glitter is worth it. She stills for a moment, smiling nevertheless, her eyes as wide as saucers as she peeks at the figure shuffling to and fro in search of her.

The playground is big, awash in honey-viscous colors of the setting sun and fading paint of see-saws and swings. There are a few children. There is also her nii-san. He is looking for her. But she has hid well, he will not find her until she wishes to be. His eyes roam over the monkey-bar and to the sand box and over again, his brow furrowed, his bangs falling into his eyes and his full cheeks, puffing further with a reddish tinge from effort. She suppresses yet another giggle as his narrow shoulders retreat to sit on the cemented steps to her right front.

Light's small hands are idle in his lap, his blue hoodie, immaculate and unruffled. She observes him, her giggles dying in her throat, realizing that he didn't call out to her in his search of ten minutes. Not once. Another minute passes by, with the shriek of a child and the groaning of the see-saw. Her nii-san is looking up now.

"Sayu, come out, please. I know you are hiding on purpose."

It is not loud, not quiet but enough to be heard clearly all over the playground. The other noises pause momentarily before resuming with the same fervor. He is unbothered for a ten-year old who has lost his sister and is alone. Most ten-year olds would have been bawling their eyes out. That does not cross her mind.

"Mother told us to stay together and return to where she and Taka-san are. She will be worried. Sayu _please_ come out."

There is a note of worrying desperation to his voice as he pauses. Sweeps his eyes over the playground again. She feels a prickle of guilt in her chest at that. She does not want mother and nii-san to worry! But he has to find her first! She swallows the feeling and stays determinately put, fingers digging in even more firmly in the rough bark.

"Alright," He is standing up. His brow is furrowed again. " I will return to mother to tell her that I cannot find you."

He turns, his step falters and he looks over his narrow shoulder, his mouth set in a grim line. He hesitates before adding, "You will be alone. If you leave the playground before I come back, something bad may happen to you."

He is walking away now. All the mischievous, playful energy recedes into her stomach and it is replaced by raw fear and she is paralyzed for two whole minutes. He is _really_ walking away. The colors are too harsh. The playground is almost empty. The last child has her hand clutched by her father, going way. Soon the bad men will come out of shadows and take her far away. Her brother is far away now. She can almost hear the whispers crawling out of the trees, dark hands reaching out-

Sayu stumbles out, her eyes stinging as she sobs, "Nii-san!" She is running in her pinching shoes, clambering over the steps, hot tears on her face.

 _"Nii-san!"_

The pathway is empty, no nii-san, no mother, no Taka-san. The trees are making long shadows on the stone and the sky is bluing, darkening to evening. Sayu cries, heavy and terrified. She is trembling, her palms sweaty despite the chill in the air and her jacket puffy and suffocating.

 _"M-Mother!"_

 _"Taka-san!"_

 _"Nii-san!"_

No one.

But then there is someone hurrying towards her and she is stepping back. It is a long, thin shadow. She tries to scream but it closes inside her throat, searing and hot. She miscalculates and stumbles, falling on her behind painfully. The tears come more freely now.

The shadow manifests into a figure, calling out her name from the top of her lungs. It is of her mother in her cream cardigan and blue pants. Her face is etched with stark worry and naked fear. Sayu let's out another sob as her mother's arms close around her. She is being pulled up, into her warm arms but Sayu's eyes are close shut.

"Oh _Sayu_ , honey are you okay? Oh my god, my darling, it's okay, mommy's here…shh… _shh_ …" She is kissing her tear-stained face, rubbing her arms.

Sayu presses her head to her mother's collarbone, not crying anymore, but shaking. She can see Taka-san behind her mother, worrying her lower lip, with Light's left hand clutched in hers. Sayu looks at Light again. He is looking down with an unreadable expression on his face.

When later that night, her mother tucks her in bed, and Sayu curls up to her side she hears him enter her room after.

"Sayu?" He is sitting beside her low bed, looking up at her, his hand raises and he is touching her face. She opens her eyes.

She presses her face into the comforter, remembers today and only shivers. "Yes?"

"I am sorry." His face crumbles, his amber eyes slanting, his voice genuine. "I should have not left you alone. I'm sorry Sayu."

His mouth is pressed together, tightly and he looks ashamed. Sayu hates to see her nii-san this way. She nods. "Okay. But you have to make up for it…"

Light crosses his arms over his chest, pouting. "What do you want?"

"Hmm. Mother will bake cookies tomorrow. Can I half your half nii-san, _pleeease_!"

He is sighing. " _Fine_ Sayu."

Sayu giggles and Light is smiling, a toothy true smile before he joins her in laughing.

Sayu does not know that she will never see this smile ever again.

 **-x-**

Upon entering the Yagami house, the first thing one notices is the picture hanging on the cream colored wall, directly across the entrance, right above a sleek wooden credenza. A large, rectangular portrait of Light in his graduation gown. His posture is perfect, with a perfect smile. There are other pictures too, a wedding picture, a family portrait, a picture of Sayu with her gymnastic medal, her father in his smart uniform. People would often not notice these but that of Light's was never ignored.

" _Taidama_! I'm home!" Sayu exclaims, kicking off her shoes, peeling off her socks. Her mother answers by means to make sure to set her shoes straight this time. Sayu sighs dramatically and complies and while doing so, looks up at her brother's picture.

Even though Light and she had more or less, the same features, he was gifted with something Sayu didn't have. Along with his russet hair and amber eyes, there was something that set him apart. Ever since he had been a child, adults and other children his age alike, would be attracted to him because of his high intelligence and good looks.

Maybe he always knew that, but now, he was more aware of himself. Surrounded by eager eyes and swooning hearts and awed teachers. He was a star student, extra classes, a hundred dates. Now, To-Oh and he works on the Kira case. He hasn't been home for months.

But before all of that, however, he was just Sayu's big brother.

She likes to remember him, when he was not Japan's most esteemed minds but just an annoyed brother at his sister, scowling from the top of his book while Sayu sang along to Ryuga Hideki on television. Or how he always tied her laces when they were children, because she was too lazy to do so. Or when he helped her study, his red coffee mug on the table and Sayu's yellow one, hers half full with chocolate milk and his with remnants of black coffee at the base. He often helped her study, at weekends when he wasn't busy being bigger than life, being bigger than their world itself.

Light had seen some of her sketches once, and she remembers him pausing, pulling them out from her book, putting the pencil down. Sayu shrieked reaching to snatch them from his hands but Light just dodges her.

"I didn't know you drew, Sayu." He says, looking at the sketches carefully. Sayu faltered in her proceeding to snatch them away. She was faintly surprised, thinking that he'd scold her for putting her mind to things like these and not paying attention to her work, he'd found the drawings pressed in her math textbook, after all. Sayu was self-conscious all of a sudden, she was used to being invisible in front of Light, she never knew that he would actually pay attention to something that was so _her_.

 _You never gave me a second thought anyway, nii-san_ but instead she blurts out, nervous, "Well, now you do. What do you think of them?"

He shifts through a sketch of a hibiscus, and pauses to regard it. There's a sketch of a girl in a raincoat which he raises a smooth eyebrow at and if she had not grown up with him to know of his subtle mannerism, she would think he was mocking her, but no, he was impressed. Another lingering gaze on her handiwork. He nods, smiling a little. "They're good. They're very good."

Sayu smiles too, a sort of raw pride surging through her. If Light thought them to be good, they simply had to be, didn't they?

"Thank you nii-san!" She exclaims, hugging his arm and he makes a disgruntled sound, swatting his hand gently at her head but not pushing her away.

"Okay Sayu, that's enough. Now, where were we? Yes…"

And as she makes way to her room, she thinks she should write to him, ask him how he is, if he is okay. Father would surely deliver her letter to him. Father comes home some nights but he hardly ever talks about Light and both she and her mother shares looks across the table, thinking the same thing : _There is something he is hiding from us. Where is Light?_ .But she can never put her pen to paper, thinking that he's busy, he'd be annoyed, and what sort of a sister is she?

In the end, the blank papers reserved for the intended letter, go cold sitting at the edge of her table. Books are pressed on it and they are forgotten. But Sayu often thinks of her brother, so far away, so above of them, never in reach, never.

 **-x-**

Years down the road when she does not need help in solving quadratic equations and has long dismissed the thought of her father and brother ever being home for once, she is thinking of texting her mother that she is sorry to be late, she is coming, to not to worry. Sayu is walking home from Itsuki's place when her life takes a sudden twist, sharp and unforgiving.

A gloved hand reaches out and pulls her away from the side-walk, into the shadow of trees. The breath is knocked out of her, and she hears the clatter of her phone falling and her hand bag is wrenched away from her hands.

She struggles, tries to scream but is, instead, biting down on the gloved hand. There is a searing panic, but she knows that she is probably being mugged, or the person is intending to rape her or-

There is a pained grunt as she smashes the back of her head into the man's face. The shadows don't frighten her anymore, she is not a child, she is an adult. She has learned self-defense from her father and she must not panic and let the unadulterated fear take over the racing adrenaline in her veins. No, she _must_ -

A rough and gritty but damp cloth is pressed to her mouth forcefully and Sayu panics. She kicks and fails and tries not to breathe it in, no she must not breathe the substance in. But there is not one, but three shadowy figures holding her still and her lungs ache for air and for the first time, her eyes sting with tears.

Her mouth gasps open, as a reflex to the burning in her chest, and a sickly sweet corrosive fume climbs down her throat, into her nose, into her lungs, into her body. She is only conscious for half a minute, and at the edge of her vision there are three men, three shadows, looming in front of her and hands reaching out, haunting, daunting, victorious.

She dips in and out of wake. Her mouth can never form words and her eyes can never fully open. Consciousness is worse than the darkness she was previously submerged in, she thinks, as she surfaces. There is blindfold on her eyes and her wrist ache from a strong rope. Her head ducks forward, her hair ticking her cheeks. Her back is cold, it aches and she is sitting upright. And she has audience.

"Good morning, Yagami Sayu. It is you who gave my men so much trouble huh?" It is a boyish voice which follows with a crazed laugh.

"W-What do you want?" Sayu rasps, the wetness on her face is apparent now, she wishes she could wipe her tears away.

A cool hand grasps her chin and she is forced to look up, even if it is all but darkness around her. Her eyes ache, fear bubbling through her chest. She has been kidnapped, she cannot defend herself, and she has no idea of what these men want.

"You are in no position to ask me that. All you need to know is that I will put your father on the phone to you and you will assure him that you are fine, nothing else, or you'd find a bullet through your brain. Understood?"

"Yes." Sayu says weakly.

There is a shuffle of cloth. A metallic phone pressed to her ear, on her sweaty hair.

 _"Sayu are you alright!? Sayu!?"_

"Father!" She breathes, crying a little despite how she aches all over, "Yes-Y-Yes-"

She no more feels the presence of the phone. Her head sags forward once more. The footsteps retreat and they sound like fancy boots. A door closes, a man is somewhere to her left or her right, she does not know when he is purring in her face. She tilts her face to the side, grimacing.

"Hey doll… don't be like that, now." The voice is not of the boy before, it is a man, and unlike him, he is speaking in English. Sayu has good English and she understands him well, even if she wished she didn't. A sick smack of his lips and Sayu holds back a desperate scream when a gloved hand brushes her cheek. "I won't touch ya doll. Not unless you try something crazy, or if you wanna me to…"

There is a sigh and another man is speaking, a gruff voice in an accent much fast paced and clipped than his, British maybe and she can make out a ' _stop_ _it'_. He sounds young but he has authority. The man is stepping away, grunting and Sayu breathes. She did not realize she was trembling before the man with the peculiar accent speaks up.

"You are shaking. Are you cold, Yagami-san?"

Sayu starts, surprised by the honorific and by the kind tone. He speaks his English slower now, and she thinks he does it to make sure she understands him.

"Do you understand what I am saying because-"

"Yes." Sayu whispers in English, she hesitates, translating words in her head. "No, I am not cold."

The man inquires no more. They probably settle somewhere else, watching her, keeping guard. And days pass this way, the man with the Bristish accent bringing her two times a day food and feeding it to her with a plastic spoon and holding a sippy cup full with water to her mouth like she is a child. Sometimes she vomits and sits in her own filth until the bathroom break.

Her clothes stick to her skin, sweaty and grimy and she cannot sleep, just wakes in and out of consciousness, not knowing how she does even that. Her back hurts and her wrists have surely been bloodied by now, but she is too tired to fully know, it aches all over anyway. In bathroom breaks she is accompanied by the same man, who is masked, she discovers, lifts her blindfold partially before stepping away. Once her eyes had battled the feeling of sharp, piercing light she tried to look around her surroundings but there was nothing but an empty cavernous feeling of slick walls and suffocated air. She wasn't sure she even cared at that point.

The boy with his perfect Japanese and high voice comes to her one day. She feels the cool barrel of a gun on the side of her forehead before he speaks.

"I hope you have been well, Sayu. Now, your father has come to get you and if he complies then you will be set free. Make no mistake, I will not kill you if the deal goes on but if you make a false step, I will shoot you at painful places. Cooperation will-" There is a crinkle of tinfoil and a sharp, crunching sound. _Candy_? Sayu thinks hazily, _Oh_ _I_ _used_ _to_ _eat_ _candy_ _too_ , _lot's_ _of_ _it_ , _sometimes_ _sharing cookies_ _with mother and she'd make_ _tea_ _too_ …

"-be only in your benefit." He finishes. Switches back to English in the same ease with his men.

Sayu is pushed along cool walls and there in more ripping tinfoil and lewd laughs and croons at her direction. She is sitting again. Somewhere cool. She slips out of consciousness, there are voices, there is her father too, grabbing her after hours? Minutes? Days?

She thinks she must feel something when her father is smothering his hand on her hair, trying to calm her and pressing a kiss to her filthy forehead. Nothing. They are in a helicopter. Her mother cries when she reaches home finally, and hugs her, sobbing, touching. Time passes swiftly until Sayu looks up from her now, clean clothes. Her brother is standing in the doorway. An unruffled, handsome suit, the proud cool gaze never dulled.

"Sayu." He says, slow and acknowledging and maybe hesitant, but Sayu is not a fool anymore.

She shifts her eyes back to the hands of her mother she grips in her lap with tight, knuckle white urgency she didn't realize she had been holding with. Her mother tells Light not to worry, that she need to come out of the trauma, that she hadn't talked once ever since.

No, not really. She has just changed. So has Light, she thinks, but he was always a good liar.

 **-x-**

Her father returns in a casket, after the following two months. Her mother does not wail, not yet. They hold to each other the best they can. Light hugs her, but it feels like a burden, so she doesn't return it but her mother does, she is craving for someone to lean on and they are all she has left, she says over and over again. Sayu can hear her wail at night, sometimes. She dies in sleep too, peacefully, they say, the following year. Light does not hug Sayu then. He is busy attending to people at the funeral. Nobody is there to hear Sayu cry at night, anyway.

 **-x-**

Years pass and yet but they never feel like they do.

Sayu has a huge house ( she's never allowed outside) so many pretty dresses (they are never worn), so many posh shoes ( sometimes she leaves them in running water). A stack of drawing paper, canvas, paints and crayons and carbon pencils too (they are never touched). Everything she wanted as a child, they're all at her reach, even Ryuga Hideki attends to her at one evening. He is old now, his smile is weak, he tries to sing but his warm voice cracks. Sayu is older too, twenty six maybe, she hasn't kept track, not really. She tells him hoarsely to never visit again. He never does again.

There is another guest, he comes every afternoon. He has amber eyes and russet hair and a handsome face and he inquires why she never talks to him, why she is always sitting drawn to herself, why she never listens. The world will be made perfect he says, otou-san didn't die in vain, he says. His elegant ( yet bloodied, even though he never sees them stained) hands pull her into a trembling hug. His voice is desperate, he holds onto Sayu, he wants her to draw hibiscus and talk gibberish and wants her to be his baby sister again because he a lonely god.

Sayu remembers the brother who was taught her math and liked her drawings and let her blow his candles on his birthdays. The man is not her brother. He is Kira, and Kira is not that brother she remembers. She watches haunting shadows of trees dance across the ceilings, every night.

She had a brother, once.

* * *

 _A/N : Ohhh boi…being an elder sister myself, I always wondered how it must be for Sayu and Light. I also wanted to try something else than my Lawlight craze and played around with this idea, but after finishing this, I'm feeling a little gloomy…huh. In case it isn't clear, the fic followed the timeline of Death Note throughout but in the end it was a Kira's New World AU. The boy Sayu describes with the perfect Japanese is Mello and the one with the British accent is Matt._

 _I would absolutely love to hear from you!_

 _Stay safe and much love,_

 _-Pari._


End file.
